Opinion: It's an unspoken question each time the accused adult is a female. We need to get over that.

We don’t ask it out loud anymore but the question lingers in the ether each time a woman is accused of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a boy.

Is this as bad as a man taking advantage of a girl?

The parents of the 13-year-old who police and prosecutors say had sex and oral sex (in the classroom) with 27-year-old teacher Brittany Ann Zamora are answering that question with a resounding “hell yes” in the form of a $2.5 million lawsuit against the Las Brisas Academy Elementary School in Goodyear.

And they’re right.

The boy’s father said, "There truly are real monsters in the world. As parents, you teach your kids that there’s no such thing as monsters. At all. There’s none. But in the real world, there are monsters. And Brittany Zamora is a monster.”

CLOSE

The father and stepmother of a 13-year old boy that was allegedly molested by a Goodyear teacher speak out. David Wallace/The Republic

If we were talking about a grown man and a 13-year-old girl no one would question a statement like the father's.

At all.

But there is still among us an awful, lingering double standard. A defendant like Zamora will count on it.

Years ago, a frustrated sex crimes detective described it to me this way: “When it comes to adults taking advantage of kids a lot of people still think that girls get raped but boys get lucky.”

In the 1980s, not long after I moved to Arizona, there was a case in Parker of a 40-year-old female teacher’s aide having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy. The student was said to have developed serious emotional problems afterwards, but the woman was sentenced to only three years of probation.

A message from the bad old days

The judge in the case actually said, ''A crime perpetrated by a woman on a male child is not the same as a crime perpetrated by a male on a female child.''

Things have changed since then, and prosecutors in Maricopa County seem to be taking a the case against Zamora very seriously.

As they should.

Court documents indicate that students told the school's principal that the teacher was “dating” a student more than a month before her arrest.

There were warnings

The boy’s parents became aware of a problem after monitoring his phone.

In addition to the alleged sexual encounters there were messages exchanged, naked photos. At one point the boy says he wants to have sex with Zamora and, according to records, she answers, "I know baby! I want you every day with no time limit.”

Accountability, yes. Change?

The family’s attorney, Michael Medina, told The Arizona Republic, “It was preventable. We want to hold the school district accountable so this never happens again in the future."

A multimillion dollar award would send that message about accountability.

But as far as something like this not happening again, that seems unlikely as long as that wrongheaded, unspoken question lingers out there in the ether.